Happy Mothers Day!

Happy Mothers Day to all the Mums out there for tomorrow. :) I just got a call from DH saying that he can take me out for lunch the day after Mothers Day while the kids are at school for a late Mothers Day celebration and that he will cook dinner for me on Mothers Day, so that's something exciting to look forward to! Yippee! His work shift is changing and this will be the last Monday that he has off, so our last opportunity to be able to go out together without the kids, so it will be a nice "last day alone" OK...heaps happening....somehow I totally missed April...We went up to my parents farm for 10 days of the Easter holidays. DH drove us up there and we spent Good Friday to Easter Monday together before he had to go back home for work and then he came back the following week end to pick us up and take us home. Again I taught Mum more things on the computer, so I think she will be fine from now on. Easter was a busy, wonderful day. It was also DHs birthday, so I cooked his favourite pumpkin strudels. My Father is currently growing pumpkins so there were pumpkins galore. I also cooked an onion cheese flan and a zucchini slice, curried egg salad and we had other salads. Mum made her famous chocolate truffles and I made DHs favourite black forest chocolate cake. We had all this for Easter lunch and as we made so much of it we had the left overs for dinner. And of course there were chocolate Easter eggs a plenty!April Credits

I haven't actually scrapped the Easter lunch table as yet, so this variation of my April desktop will have to do for now. I haven't had a lot of scrapping time lately and Mum came for a visit for the last week of April for 2nd DSs 13th birthday. Yep, I showed her a few more things on the computer. It is always busy when Mum comes for a visit, as she can only spend a small amount of time with each family member in Brisbane, so I have to make sure I get everything done that I wanted to do when she is here before she moves on to the next family member. On the Thursday that she was here, I took her to see the movie "Beneath Hill 60" A wonderful Australian movie about WW1. My maternal Grandmother's cousin died in that area around that time of the war and his 3 other brothers were also over there in the war, his elder brother died back here in Australia from wounds sustained in the war, so it was a personal reminder of what our soldiers had to deal with at that terrible time. Arthur, the one that died in action, is the middle one in the photo with his 2 other brothers, his older brother who died at home from wounds is not in the photo. The photo on the left is the actor Gyton Grantly from the movie Beneath Hill 60.
Mum enjoyed it very much, for many reasons...it was a true story, it was an amazing visual of what her 2nd cousins endured during the war, it was an Australian story and by no way the least... it had her favourite actor Gyton Grantly in it. She adores him! Of course I enjoyed the movie very much too and also like Gyton. As an 18 year old I worked in a fruit and vegie store in the suburb where he lived, so I probably served his Mum and him as an 8 year old if they came into the store where I worked, lol!
The other thing to happen recently is DigiShopTalk's Scrapper Choice Awards are here again. This year I decided to submit a few layouts.
Best Overall Layout:
Best Title Work:Best Use of Template:
Best All About Me Layout:
Best Inanimate Subject Layout:Most Humorous Layout:Well, that's it for me for today. Have to go and hang out the 3rd load of washing because I don't want to have to do anything but laze about in my pjs tomorrow for Mothers Day. :)
Happy Mothers Day!

Marching On.

Well, it is now March and we are starting with a rainy autumn. We have had flooding in areas around our city and in the north-west parts of our state. Actually, there has been storms and rain in almost all of the states in Australia except Western Australia. Thankfully the rain stopped in time for our 2nd child to go on school camp and for me to go up North to spend the week end with my parents....child free! My Mother bought a new computer and I needed to help her get used to Windows 7, transfer all her photos and data from her old computer and download a few security programs, etc. She panics if things aren't where they supposed to be and as Windows 7 is slightly different to her ancient computer that was using Windows XP, it was too overwhelming for her. So I got on a train and went up to her farm to help her write out new instructions of how to get around on her new computer. She says she is still a little nervous of it but she is loving it. Her old computer was given to her by some lovely friends, Terry and Robyn and for the past 3 years it has been her passion. She is a blinkie and email freak and all the family delight in her colourful animated emails. Humongous animated birthday emails are a favourite of hers. She likes to include voice clips and music in her emails as well. But it was time to say goodbye to her old computer as it was starting to be extremely glitchy and a never ending source of problems and frustration. It was a wonderful way for her to be introduced to the wonderful world of computers and without her dear friends gifting her this old computer she would never have even considered buying a computer. Now she doesn't know herself, her new computer is modern, fast and best of all, reliable. My sister did a wonderful job of teaching Mum how to use her old computer and I have helped a lot too. Mum never dreamed that she would know how to do the things she has learned and we are all proud of her computer achievements. We have always been a phone call away when she has needed help with some strange problem or other, like folders, photos and programs that 'just piss off' and task bars that wind up on the side of the screen. It can be extremely difficult to explain what she needs to do to overcome a problem over the phone or impossible to understand what she means when she says things like 'The thing down the bottom has just pissed off and I don't know how to get it back'
Some of my favourite computer sayings of Mum's are: (In Outlook Express, to embed a photo)...'going to the mountains' and (checking how much free space she has on her hard drive)...'checking on my pink' LOL! Well both those things are completely different in Windows 7, so the train trip up to her place was a necessity. When our whole family goes up to Mum and Dad's farm, Mum always buys a ton of treats and goodies for the kids, as any doting Grandparent does and as a joke I said to Mum...'I hope you are going to buy me some treats' and she took it quite seriously and I have returned home almost a dress size larger! (and the dreaded chocolate overdose season is almost upon us too!)
Anyway, here is a photo of my Mum and her new computer. Notice the colour of Mum's choice in desktop and t-shirt, hmmm, wonder where my love of purple came from...lol!Mum insisted that she pay for my train tickets to and from her place and a little extra besides. So my DH and I were able to go to the movies the Monday before I left and also the Monday that I got back. Thank you Mum....! I really enjoyed going to Mum's place and helping her with her new computer, I missed Rob and the kids and it was strange but lovely to wake up in the morning and not have to do anything for anyone other than myself, no fights to break up or set up sources of entertainment to placate bored or grumpy children. It was indeed a refreshing break. The 2 movies Rob and I went to see were 'The Wolfman' on the Monday before I went away and on the Monday I came home we saw Avatar 3D. Both movies were wonderful. 'The Wolfman had me screaming at those certain 'jump out of your seat' moments and there were plenty of those kind of moments in this film. There were probably about 20 other people in the cinema with us and I am a screamer, always have been always will be, can't help it....I get a fright and I scream. What a joy it was for poor hubby (sarcasm) to delight in the fact that I was the only person in the cinema screaming at all the scary parts, lol. He said he could tell lots of people were jumping out of their seats, but I was the only screamer...lol. It was a really good movie tho, a well written werewolf movie. Sir Anthony Hopkins was at his finest and Benicio Del Toro played a brilliant role too! I know I am all about vampires, but a well done werewolf movie can be good too. I've seen few werewolf movies that have done it for me. As a teen we loved 'American Werewolf in London', (hmm, Rik Mayall was in this...might have to track this down on DVD) and 'The Howling' but our all time favourite werewolf movie was 'The Company of Wolves' ... I think I had better pop into JB hi-fi and see if I can pick this up too! ...DH has never seen it but I have seen it about 40 times at least. Many quirky quotes from this movie have remained in my vocabulary. Naturally I have seen and own 'Underworld' but the idea of vampires and werewolves fighting each other seems a little off to me. Similar to the tacky t-shirt art from the '90s that had legendary Australian predators, crocodiles and great white sharks fighting, or screen and music idols Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley painted 'together'. Just a bit tacky for my liking. My DH enjoyed Underworld more than I did. Anyway, here is a photo of DH and I at the movies, ready to see The Wolfman...and yes, I will probably do a layout for both the above photos. As well as this photo...of my purple gum boots that I adore and have been wearing a lot lately on account of the weather.

An elderly man even asked me where I got my purple gum boots, as he needed some new gumboots for gardening! Lol.... (nowhere fancy, just Kmart) hee hee :)

And speaking of layouts... I had a layout of mine win an awesome prize! DST Gold Member kit challenge using Kari Hentzelt's kit 'Fabulousity' I could hardly believe my luck, Kari's prize for me was ...her entire shop!! Yes, I got to download everything she has in her store at Scrapbook Bytes! Amazing prize....and this is what I have done with some of her beautiful products...Credits to my desktop layout Here and link to the layout that won me this awesome prize: Here

Another layout I am very proud of is this one, that got a nice comment on it from one of the kit's designers, Kate Hadfield, thanks Kate! :) (at my Lilypad gallery)

Credits at DST here.

This is our 2nd eldest child at his end of year play in Late November. I am missing him at the moment, as he went away on school camp the morning that I came home from my Mum's place. So I haven't seen him since Friday morning. That makes it 5 days I haven't seen him. The longest I have ever been away from one of my children. But he comes home this afternoon, so I am looking forward to giving him a big bear hug when he gets off the bus! Yippee!
I am happy I have been able to post at least once a month to my blog here... Hoping to keep that up. See you in April! :)

End of Summer.

It is almost March, it's been raining so things are nice and cool at the moment, not humid and steamy as it was before we got the showers, so it almost feels like we are heading towards Autumn. That could change however, the past couple of years we have had some horrid heat waves in the early days of March, but I hope not, tired of sweating. I am a Summer girl and I don't mind the heat at all but when the humidity goes up, like it can here in tropical Queensland, it gets sticky.

Since my last post, the kids have started their new year of school. I have plenty of photos but I haven't scrapped them yet, even tho my 2nd eldest child has now started High School. I love him being in High School now. The 2 boys are in High School together and the 2 girls are in Primary. Makes it easier somehow, lol.We celebrated Australia Day the day before they went back to school. Credits here.And then there was Valentine's Day. Hubby and I managed to go out to the movies on the day.

And of course I scrapped it all.This is my desktop for this month. Here is a layout sized version at my gallery.

Kasia Designs 'Love Oclock' Credits Here.

Credits Here: layout about the treats I made for Valentine's Day.And us on our way out to the movies for Valentine's Day. Credits Here.

Fruits of Summer

We are almost at the end of the school holidays. We have been up at my parents farm for a few days.
Mum has a Brazilian fruit tree called a Jaboticaba that are in season and full of fruit. They are so delicious and there is nothing nicer than being able to go out and pick fresh fruit. She also has a mulberry tree full of mulberries, so yummy!
We had a nice time on the farm. The kids helped collect the eggs from the chicken coup. We even went swimming at the local public pool.

And back at home we have a mango tree. Last year we didn't even get a flower on it, much less a mango. This year, however, we have been inundated with mangos. Again, so yummy and wonderful to be able to go out the back door and pick fresh fruit.Credits Here

Sadly my mango mornings are over now. My cousin says I need to go to Mangos Anonymous. lol.

As I am so bereft of picking mangos every morning, I finally planted a vegetable patch. Thankfully we have had some lovely showers to water my garden and a few little plants have emerged, but I am a lousy gardener, plus I have cheeky possums to contend with, so not too sure of how successful my crops will be, but at least I got the seeds in the ground. Cross fingers and wish me luck, I need it!

New Years Day

Happy New Year to all!

We had a lovely day, had a nice New Year's Day lunch and as we let the kids stay up past midnight, they were all gracious enough to sleep in way past their usual crack of dawn rising time.
Well, Christmas and New Year's are over for another year...The eldest's 15th birthday is coming up soon and then there is the 'back to school' business to attend to.
Here are a few layouts I've done since my last blog post.
credits here: Christmas Countdown Calendar
This is the Christmas card I made this year. My Uncle calls us Rob and the Robette's. I think it is because our children look so much like my husband Rob....? I think it's cute anyway.
Credits: bg paper is by Laurie Ann from 'Quirky Guitar Hero' overlayed over another paper by Catherine Designs 'Esprit de Noel' the glitter alpha is by Diane Rigdon, Santa, lollies, candy cane and paper that the present is made from and red mat also by Laurie Ann 'Christmas Crinkles' element pack and 'Putting On The Ritz' paper pack. The holly is by Alana Designs from 'One Magic Night' frame is by Flergs from 'Into the Twilight', the scroll border on the mat is a Dover image and the poinsettia cluster is by MDesigns.Credits Here: Red T-shirts. This was done for a DST diamond membership challenge. Cool prize hey? So I had to enter it, plus I adore Syrin's stitches too (can you notice ;) ) Credits here: Little Santas. My boys with some funny lollipops.And here is a layout I just uploaded tonight. Credits here: Making Christmas Cookies.
Now I am off to bed. We are hoping to go swimming tomorrow, with a little luck it won't be raining.
Hope everyone had a Happy Christmas and a safe, healthy New Year to come.

New Moon On Monday!

DH and I are off to see New Moon tomorrow! After dropping the kids at school, we will be going to see the much awaited Twilight sequel in the Gold Class section of our local cinemas! I am so excited and have been singing Duran Duran's 'New Moon on Monday' all week! I put the video for Duran Duran's 'New Moon on Monday' over on the right, why there is 4 links to the video is Bloggers guess...I'm not that great at working my own blog...so try and pretend that there is only one preview of the video that you can see, thanks, lol...

It's been a long week, my husband was on night shift and our 2nd eldest son had his end of year 7 school play. On Wednesday he had a dress rehearsal, at night, which is hard for me, as I don't drive and we are a 40 minute walk away from the school. Luckily one of the teachers who is a friend of ours, angelically offered to pick him up and bring him home for me when he was finished. So that was wonderful. On the Thursday he had his first performance. We had to walk 20 minutes to the nearest bus stop... and then almost missed the bus home, as the play went a bit overtime but thankfully we managed to get it. For his second performance, DH, Rob took the night off work so we could all go and see him.
He was wonderful, he played 2 roles and he really gave them his all, we were so proud of him!
Now that the hectic school week is over I can breath easy and am really looking forward to going to see New Moon tomorrow. It will be our second time going to Gold Class and we have already decided what we are going to order for lunch, yum! I'm getting the garlic prawns and mushroom balls and Rob is getting the seafood platter.
As I have been itching to see New Moon, I decided to play with Flergs 'Into The Twilight' kit.
I bought it a couple of weeks ago and have not got around to use it...so this is what I made with it...Here are my 2 little girls on Halloween. I bought them and my niece matching t-shirts that said 'I'm With The Vampires' and my girls had bat wings and bat ears too (as did I, lol) I thought that Flergs kit was perfect for this photo of them in our front yard.
I've also done another layout for Rachel Young with her new alpha Messy Machine Alphabet
Credits Here.
What am I reading at the moment? After I finished reading 'A Touch of Dead', the short stories of Sookie Stackhouse, I started reading 'Sharon Osbourne Extreme My Autobiography'I am really loving it, loving Sharon...I get a laugh from her humour and her way of looking at things, I like her attitude. I go to my local large shopping centre once a week as my day out and I will buy something to eat and sit down in the food court or wherever and read whatever book I am reading. I must look like a weirdo, because I would be laughing out loud at some of the things Sharon wrote however, of all the things that Ozzy did to her when he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, I didn't really bat an eyelid at, coz you kind of expect it, but the time that he tried to strangle her, I just bawled my head off. The despair she felt about the whole situation really touched me, it was very sad. I love the honest open way she has shared everything, she hasn't been shy about saying anything. Of course I watched 'The Osbournes' when it was on TV. We had Foxtel when it started and I would watch it with Rob, who is an Ozzy fan, owns every album he ever made. I knew Black Sabbath only because Marc Almond did a cover of Paranoid, but once you watch 'The Osbournes' you can't help but love Ozzy. My 65 year old Aunty loves Ozzy! Now I am needing to see the episodes again, so I will be going to look for them when I go to the shops next week...in the mean time, I will be youtubing interviews with them.
The next book I will be reading is 'Burning Bright' by Tracy Chevalier.
Well, that's it for another post, hope all you Twilighters out there have either seen and enjoyed the movie, or are going to see it soon. Have a nice week :)

New Computer!

Well, I got a new computer at long last, yippee! It's my very first laptop, and I love it so much!
The other computer is still getting fixed, and it will be the kids 2nd computer. Right now I am sitting in my recliner chair typing this. I never thought I'd ever get a laptop, so this is just so special to me!
I have yet to do the arduous task of putting all my scrapbooking stuff from the old computer and yet to put ACDsee on and tag everything again. I have only transferred all of the stuff I downloaded onto the kids old computer as yet.
So, what's happened in the last 4 or 5 months since my old computer died? Well, the printer decided to drop dead too, tho I still need to check it out because it just may have clashed with the kids old computer that we hooked it up to...so lately I have been getting things printed at our local print store. I have a CD case calender and I normally just do the coming month's page a few days before the start of the month. The computer died before I got the chance to print one out for August. I'd never put anything on a USB flash drive and taken it to a printers, but as September approached I was getting tired of the July calender looking at me, so I made a layout for September using the kids computer hooked up to the printer, then the printer died so I made a calender layout for October and November and put them on a flash drive of my son's and took them to the print shop. It was such a relief to have that availability...so when Halloween loomed, I decided to get all my Halloween stuff printed at my local print shop too.
Here is my November CD calender layout...using Flergs: Sistafriend BundleThe date was made by Karah Fredericks 'Need A Bead' at The-Lily Pad. I know it's a bit confusing...a November calender with September written across it, but I had made the October calender layout the same day and it was photos of the kids and me taken the same day (25 Sept 09) and I loved how it looked so much, that when I chose that photo of the kids from the same day for November, I didn't have the heart to take it off, coz it looked too good to move, lol!
Our Eldest DD had her 9th birthday in September...Credits here
Our younger DD went to her first disco...Credits here
Then in October, I turned 39. My gorgeous cousin Barb sent me a beautiful bunch of flowers! I've never had flowers sent to me before! In the afternoon, after I'd got home from school with the kids, there was a knock at the door....there's never a knock at my door, I thought it was probably someone trying to sell me an new phone plan or something of that nature but it was a man with a big boxed bouquet of flowers! I can't describe how surprised and thrilled I was! And if that was not naughty enough, the rascal girlie had put $50 in the card! She is such a lovely, wonderful cousin. I used the money to book tickets for hubby and I to see New Moon in Gold Class on the 23rd of November...I can't wait!! Thank you so much Barb, you spoilt me so much and I do so appreciate it!
Then Halloween came along. I made choker necklaces for myself, Sister, niece and my 2 girls and also earrings for all of us (except my youngest DD as her ears aren't pierced yet)
here they are, I thought they came out quiet cute. Better than the necklaces I made and my first earrings I've ever made. Mine are the purple ones, naturally. We had a couple of firsts for Halloween, my Sister, niece and nephew came over to our place for Halloween and I took them and my kids trick or treating for the first time. They got some wonderful treats and plenty of them...we were even given a humongous block of Toblerone chocolate for us all to share, which was really delicious!Credits here
and this layout was made with a gorgeous kit I won before Halloween call 'Boo' by Laurie Ann, along with the word art. So in addition to this layout, I made my Halloween treat bag toppers with it... Thank You Laurie Ann! :)

And now it's November and my long awaited Guest CT November stint has arrived, yippee! :) I am guest CT for Rachel Young Designs.
Here are my first 2 layouts for the month....
Credits here.Credits here. The alpha on this last layout is Rachel's latest release. Paint Like You Mean it.